Tuesday, July 25, 2017

Mapping the Detroit Riot from the Streets

50 years ago one of the largest riots in US History took place in Detroit. The following year geographer William Bunge began an innovative project, the Detroit Geographical Expedition. People from underprivileged neighborhoods were taught to use mapping as a tool to highlight racial inequities. These untrained mappers created some excellent maps showing the plight of their neighborhoods. I plan to show more of these in a future post, but for now here are some maps of the 1967 riot.

The report that includes these maps can be seen here - this is a large file that may be slow to download.

July 25, 1967*, 7:30 AM

The riot stemmed from a raid at an after hours bar called the Blind Pig (top of the map) on 12th Street (now Rosa Parks Boulevard). The next map shows the spread of the riot between 7:30 and 9:30...

... and then at 9:45 AM.

Here is a map of fire damage across the city.

The 12th Street Riot area is the dense cluster north of Grand Boulevard and West of Woodward.

*Most accounts say the riot began on the 23rd - though it lasted for several days, these maps appear to show the early stages. Therefore the date on the map (the 25th) may be inaccurate.